If you don't like your lifestyle, just shop for a new one

What does the word "lifestyle" suggest to you? To me, it has become an incantation for those involved in the engineering of empty aspirations: improve your lifestyle, live the luxury lifestyle - what does that even mean? It is a limited, and limiting, metaphor. I can visit a hairstylist, but can I visit a lifestylist? Or is that just another term for a parent, teacher or psychotherapist? The word "style" also creates an illusion of freedom, as if we have unlimited lifestyle choices hanging in our existential wardrobes. Shall I live the life of a Parisian poet this year, or should I dust off the South American revolutionary lifestyle; I hear that Che Guevara is back in fashion.

The word itself comes to us courtesy of Alfred Adler: physician, psychologist and co-founder of the psychoanalytic movement made famous by Sigmund Freud. Adler used the term "style of life" to reflect an individual's unique, unconscious and relatively fixed way of responding to (or avoiding) the main aspects of life: relationships, love and work. But the term has long since been debased, and is now used to elevate or magnify minor aspects of a person's life into some kind of meaningful whole. For example, "He lives a rock'n'roll lifestyle" could just mean he is borderline alcoholic and has issues facing up to responsibility. She lives an "alternative lifestyle" could just mean she has unusual body piercings, bizarre taste in music and attention-grabbing fashion sense.

Equally, someone who has a "luxury lifestyle" may not have luxurious relationships: the finest mahogany parents, gold-plated spouses or diamond-encrusted friends. Their occupation may not be luxurious. It may even be non-existent: luxurious meaninglessness. Life cannot be reduced to objects. However luxurious, they do not make the man, or the woman, and they certainly don't constitute a style of life, at least not in the Adlerian sense.

A survey reported in The National last week found that luxuries have become a lifestyle in the UAE. The report proved to be strangely incendiary, and the responses from many readers suggested there should be a sense of guilt associated with living the "luxury lifestyle". This notion of guilt seems to me to be rooted in the frugal, protestant work ethic. It may be that we are conflating a fine appreciation of aesthetics and craftsmanship with a form of decadent over-consumption. What fault is to be found in a fondness for the form of a beautifully crafted artefact? Are the connoisseur and the glutton just the same?

Some readers suggested that shopping for luxury goods was a type of addiction. One even suggested it was a form of compensation-reaction to the UAE's lack of picturesque, verdant lakeside landscapes. Others proposed a variant of the "build it and they will come" principle, altered slightly to: "Build ever-bigger malls, and people will shop." But for me the issue is that shopping, or a predilection for expensive stuff, should be considered a lifestyle at all. If we think about what governs our relationships with other people, what shapes how we address our responsibilities, I hope the answer isn't Marina Mall. Surely rational thought, culture and religion still play important roles.

That said, you can never underestimate the power of psychology's Dark Side, the Sith Lords of consumer behaviour and desire-engineering who can transform like into love, and want into need with imperceptible elegance. The power of this dark science is attested to by the exhibitions of almost religious brand loyalty it inspires. I once watched a couple of iPhone enthusiasts evangelically try to lead a group of poor misguided BlackBerry deviants back to the straight and narrow.

Lifestyle should not be made so narrow as to be defined by what objects we choose to buy, or not. The danger is that we lose sight of what is really important, and validation through the possession of objects is all that is left: I am what I own. If we are wealthy enough to self-validate through objects then the chances are we also have lots of time on our hands. With little need or desire to work we have unlimited leisure time, which can lead to - you guessed it, empty consumerism and more self-validation through objects.

I heard a story once about an American tourist telling a Mauritanian Bedouin how luxurious and labour-free his life was in the US: "I have a private jet, I can get from one side of the country to the other in six hours, a distance that would take you months." Wide-eyed but wise, the Bedouin asked: "And what do you do with all the time you save?" The American was stumped. Dr Justin Thomas is a psychologist and assistant professor in the Department of Natural Science and Public Health at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi